The Flowers
by marginaliana
Summary: When Jack leaves, Ianto doesn't sleep for three days. Set after "End of Days."


When Jack leaves, Ianto doesn't sleep for three days.

The first night he lets Owen shepherd them into the pub and ply them all with cheap beer, and then he slips back to the Hub when everyone else goes home. He tells himself it's because there's plenty more to be done, but once he's locked the door of the tourist office he doesn't move to tidy the brochures or finish the filing.

Instead he reaches for the little stool behind the counter and pulls it over so he can sit next to the glass box in the corner. Inside it are flowers - the leaves and stems a dark green-blue, the blossoms an unearthly pale blue with a shock of yellow at the center. Looking at them, Ianto tries not to think about Jack, and fails.

Jack hadn't really given Ianto the flowers, not as such. The team had found them in the overgrown back garden of a Balrubian who'd been posing as human, hiding from UNIT in one of Cardiff's least respectable neighborhoods. The flowers acted like a drug on humans, making them feel safe and calm, and perhaps disturbingly it was a decrease in crime that had drawn Torchwood's attention to the area.

Not much harm had been done, though, so after giving the Balrubian a stern warning not to let it happen again, Jack and Gwen had dug the flowers up, bulbs and all, and Ianto had repotted them in a secure container. Still, he can't help but think of them as Jack's flowers, that he'd given to Ianto for safekeeping.

He opens the lid now and lets the scent of the blossoms wash over him. It doesn't work very well; when Jack had died there hadn't seemed much point in keeping up the maintenance on them, and now they've begun to wilt inside the glass from days without air. Still, there's enough pollen left to ease the feeling of strange emotions gnawing at his stomach.

_I should throw these away,_ he thinks, but instead he waters the soil and settles down to wait and watch. _Some of the bulbs haven't yet opened fully, and perhaps they might. Jack'll be happy to see that, when he's home._

When the sun comes up he closes the lid of the box and goes to make coffee.

-----

The second night the scent of the flowers seems less powerful, and after an hour or so Ianto goes downstairs to get the filing he's been putting off doing. Jack's office seems stuffy and dark and confining, and Ianto hurriedly gathers up the paperwork he needs before escaping back upstairs. He carefully climbs the steps while peering around the tower of reports to be filled out in triplicate, then sits cross-legged and sorts everything into piles.

As the night stretches on and Ianto gets more involved in his work, the piles of paper grow higher and higher. He's weary, but the tinge of pollen in the air mingles with the familiar smell of ink and paper, and he wraps it around himself like a protective cocoon. It's easy to pretend that this is a night like any other.

Then one of the piles of paper topples over, covering Ianto in a shower of hole punch remnants and dust. He gets three paper cuts at once, trying to right the pile and keep it all in order. He growls a little, and wrestles everything back into place, then takes a moment to stand and stretch.

_I've been up here too long,_ he thinks. _Any minute now Jack will walk through the door and beckon me to bed with that smile, with that tilt of his hips. I bet he'd even rub my back, if I made it worth his while._ When Ianto realizes what he's thinking, he feels himself flush hard, all the way to the roots of his hair. He'd honestly forgotten, for that split second, that Jack was gone.

"Get a grip on yourself, Ianto Jones," he says, and takes a deep, calming breath. "He'll be here soon enough."

He finishes the paperwork by dawn and reluctantly closes up the box, pulling open the curtains so the flowers can get more light.

-----

On the third night the flowers look even worse, and Ianto spends two hours searching the archives for anything that might keep them alive. He finds an old fertilizer recipe buried at the back of a cabinet, and though his eyelids are drooping he takes it into the kitchen and gathers the ingredients: wood pulp, a stick of gypsum chalk, a sprig of thyme. He has to get the wood pulp by running paper through the crosswise shredder, and he takes a perverse delight in destroying one of Owen's not very well hidden porn magazines for the purpose.

He boils the mixture down to a sticky mass and takes the steaming pot upstairs. It's hard to pour the stuff onto the soil without squashing the blossoms, and by the time he's managed it Ianto's arms ache from the strain of holding the heavy pot, and he's covered in sweat. He sits down on the stool and wipes the back of his forearm across his face.

"This was much easier when Jack was dead," he says, and then has to stop himself from slapping his hand over his mouth. _Christ, I am a horrible person,_ he thinks, _but it's true._ And it is true; he's always found it easier to grieve than to wait.

Yet he's resigned to waiting; Jack, after all, has already performed one miracle. Ianto looks down. The flowers have perked up already, and as he brings his face close to one blossom it seems to let out a tiny puff of calming pollen. _I just have to wait a bit longer,_ he thinks. _Jack's coming home soon._

It takes him three cups of strong brew to stay awake the rest of the night.

-----

When the sun sets on the fourth day, Ianto opens the box again and waits for the flowers to do their work. It's been a long day, one which had involved both being chased by weevils and being shouted at by Owen for being too slow. He really needs the scent now, needs it to stabilize the tremor in his hands and his irregular heartbeat. Instead, all he can smell is rot. The green-blue stems have mostly dissolved into black, and there are more of the fragile petals in the dirt than still clinging to their stems.

"No," Ianto breathes, "no, come on." He cups one blossom in his hand, just as Jack had cupped Ianto's face before pulling him into that kiss, three days before. The petals are limp under his touch. He struggles to support the flower, gently, gently, but as he watches it detaches from the stem and sticks messily to his hand. "No," he says, but there's no force in it. He knows it's too late.

Suddenly Ianto is overcome with anger, and he plunges his hands into the soil, yanking at the bulbs until they come free. He smashes them against the wall of the box, half hoping the glass will shatter. "How could you do this to me?" he screams, "you stupid, fucking, stupid, stupid--" and then as suddenly as it had come the rage leaves him. He's shaking and absurdly weak; there is dirt under his fingernails and halfway up his arms, and there are thick, exhausted tears running down his face.

_I can't, I can't,_ Ianto thinks. He rests his elbows on the box and takes a deep, shuddering breath. He puts his forehead down on the backs of his filthy hands. _I can't wait any longer. Jack's not coming._ He swallows, then makes himself say it out loud.

"Jack's not coming." Saying it seems to unlock something in his body, and moments later he falls asleep just like that, dirty and hunched over and relieved.

In the morning, when the rest of the team arrives, the tourist office is clean and the remains of the flowers are gone.


End file.
